What do readers think of The Illicit Happiness of Other People by Manu Joseph? Write your own review.

You have to love an author who writes about topics that make your stomach turn, but in a way that you want to keep reading.

I hated almost everything that happened in this book, I wouldn't say I liked most of the characters either (actually, I think I hate them all), each paragraph was extremely dense with information. The book needed work to be read! And yet, I couldn't put it down.

The style of Joseph's writing makes the difficult topics even more abrasive, but it's beautiful writing in its own right.
I rarely have such a strong reaction to a book - to dislike every aspect of it and then, once done, appreciate the whole and rush to recommend it to others (with its many red flags).

I'm not a fan, usually, of books that torture the reader and make them push through. But because of books like THIS one, I have a very difficult time DNF-ing a book. Through more than half of this book I was preparing to abandon it and because I didn't, I now know it would've been a major loss in my literary journey, had I not finished it!